sadoldgit

McMenemy had the best squad ever. Bates had Ron Davies and two fine wingers to supply him. Don't you think that Burley would have liked Channon, Keegan, Armstrong etc? But he manged to win more matches with inferior players.

What is success? Burley said clearly the aim was the play offs, which he achieved in his only full season. With a slice of luck we might have gone further. We were ceratinly one of the top 6 sides in the Championship that season. What we didn't have was consistency, something you can't buy unless you have a bottomless pit of money. He won nearly 43% of his matches. I don't think he did that badly. Be nice to get somewhere near that now wouldn't it?

Win ratios:- Burley 42.7% Hoddle 42.3% McMenemy 41.7% Bates 39.2% Sturrock 38.5% Strachan 35.5% Doesn't make Burley the greatest manager we ever had but does show that he won more his his matches than anybody else, so not such a mug maybe? Certainly much better than Strachan!

You can think what you like, it doesn't change the stats and what he achieved in a short time. How many away games have we won since (and how many 6-0)? It is just a shame that we didn't keep the services of somebody that knows a thing of two about a "winning mentality" too. Funny that this is a hot topic now but was derrided at the time when we had the "best" exponent of it in the business.

So you are telling me that they just had one brief spell of spending cash and were instantly successful? I seem to recall all of those clubs spending a great deal of cash over a long period of time.

McMenemy had better players to call on and didn't do as well points wise. I am not saying that Burley is the best manager in the world but in his only full season for us he did okay and we have gone downhill rapidly after he left. Perhaps people have forgotten what is was like to win matches because he was the last manager we had that used to do that.

Yep because as we see elsewhere money means success. Remind me again how many European Championships have Chelsea won and how much have they spent? Redknapp was given £6m to keep us up (quite a lot of money for us wouldn't you say?). That worked.

Shown up? Didn't do too badly at Ipwich and Hearts and took us to the play offs, so yeah, he must be rubbish. If you want to have a pop at managers why not Redknapp or Pearson, neither of whom had good records with us.

Really? So what, he is still the most successful manager we have had in terms of points on the board yet he is constantly ripped apart. Trouble with many fans on here is that they are never satisfied and equate money with success. We were a lot more "successful" under Burley than we have been since (yep, we actually won games, and away from home too) but you wouldn't think so to read here. So what about Scotland, hardly blessed with World class players are they? The last decent season we had was when we made the play offs and guess who the manager was? Give the bloke some credit. I would swop those days for these in a heartbeat.

Funny that as he averaged 1.54 points per game - more than any other manager we have had.

Sadly we didn't have the best close season in terms of building the club back up but it looks like we havethe right people in place and finally a squad that should be able to do well. In that sense I think he is right and this is the start for us. What we still have to contend with is the negative, losing mentality of the club. Whether Pardew can turn that round this seaosn only time will tell, but I think that is his biggest problem. Of cousre all those who derried the likes of Woodward will not agree, but we could sure use someone here with those skills to help the manager change the "attitude" prevailing at the club. Still, whatever, we need to start winning, and soon.

Here Waigo here Waigo here Waigo ... (pinched from someone on the Echo site)

Yep, it is a wind up. We haven't signed anybody and the club has no ambition (as per your mail yesterday). Don't know if these players are any good, but surely even you can see that Pardew is actually trying to improve the squad?

Staying up will do for me....nothing changes!

Looks like he is being gang raped!

Yes I suppose you could look at it like that (if your were a morose manic depressive). Or you could look at Pardew's statement saying he was hoping to bring in three players and use your brain to work out that perhaps, for whatever reasons, those deals could not be done today. You could also stop and think about the players we have already brought in recently. But then that wouldn't fit in with your agenda would it? I wondered how long it would be before you started on the new management set up, not long was it?

Just keeping it to 70 mph would be a triumph.

If you think that mental arithmatic is dead, take a look at spelling. I did a sift for an interview process yesterday and every application from agraduate had basic spelling mistakes in it. And these people have spellcheck FFS. It is not that people are dimmer, it is because the standard of education has dropped and kids are now just taught how to pass exams, they are not "educated."

No surprise really. When there is little money to spend these are the things that go. There was an interesting interview with someone on Talksport yesterday. How he changed the colour scheme in the dressing room and things like that and how they made a big difference psychologically. No, it was not the much derided Clive Woodward, it was the much respective Sam Alladyce. Woodword gets a regular slating on here but one of his jobs was to chnage the mindset of this club into winners, something we haven't remotely come near since we reached the play offs. These things cost money, these things need vision. When the money dried up and the fans didn't "get" the vision, ideas and approaches were jettisoned. I am not saying the reason we are in this mess is because Wilde bottled it and go rid of Woodward. But it did not help. Woodward was not the only one who could have done that job, but clubs like ours do need to punch above their weight and he was brought in to help us do that. We have been punching under our weight for a number of seasons now but a number of people stil don't get it. Hoddle is a football man, Woodward a rugby man. Hoddle didn't believe in the players pratising penalities and as a consequence the national team failed. Do you think they would have practiced penalties if Woodward had had some input? It has nothing to do with boundaries, it has everything to do with basic common sense. Woodward and the people like him understand what makes the difference between winning and losing and put things into place to make the former more likely. When you are not Manchester United or Chelsea or Manchester City you need people like that to give you the extra 2 or 3% that makes a difference. Sadly at one point we had an opportunity and a structure to to something that would make a difference but the lack of vision and the wearing of blinkersin some quarters meant we took a wrong turn, and boy are we paying for it now.

. But a forum meet up sounds even sadder than playing for a forum X1! I agree!!!

Perhaps this place wouldn't become so hostile if people didn't hide behind user names? Some people on here I have met, some I know their names but have never met, most I have not met and don't know their real names. I am sure if we all meet up somewhere we would get along a lot better than we do on here!

I think it was a joke mate.

The Dell was awesome. No one liked playing there and I am sure that helped us pick up plenty of points. St Marys however is a lovely stadium but I wouldn't say it was anthing like as intimidating for visting teams as The Dell was. We had to move but we have paid the price.

Or rather they had used up all The Beatles' ideas....

It is littered with people who coach and are good at it. Where is it written that if you coach in one sport you are automatically disqualified from coaching in another? Ever hear of the words "transferrable skills?" Still, we have been a huge success since he left so who needs him eh? LOL.